Producer blames new EU rules for horsemeat scandal (From Darlington and Stockton Times)

Producer blames new EU rules for horsemeat scandal

3:26pm Friday 1st March 2013 in Farming

A NORTH Yorkshire company which produced desinewed meat before EU regulations banned it last year has told an investigating MP this directly led to the appearance of horse meat in UK food.

The owners of Newby Foods, near Northallerton, used to supply beef and lambto allthemajor supermarkets and food processing companies such as Silvercrest and Dalepak Hambleton.

But in March last year the European Commission ruled that desinewed meat – meat removed from the bone – must be reclassified as mechanically separated meat.

The EC banned it with seven days’ notice, despite the UK Government making it clear there were no health risks associated with the product.

The ban left many food manufacturers with a very tight deadline to source an equally cheap source of meat for their products.

DougManning, operationsdirector of the Newby Wiske-based company, said the vast majority of companies his firm supplied prior to the ban, have now been found to have been selling products containing horse meat. He said: “We produced pork, chicken, lamb and beef. We’re still producing pork and chicken, but it is just 50 per cent of the business we had.

“I would say 90 per cent of the companies that had a problem with horse meat, we used to supply.”

Theban wasdevastating for the company, which had to lay off more than a third of its staff – 40 people – a month later.It now has £2m worth of meat extraction machinery lying idle.

The company met MP Anne McIntosh, head of the commons Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, as part of her investigation into the horse meat scandal.

In a meeting with farmers in Thirsk on Thursday of last week, she said there was a direct correlation between the hastily-introduced ban on desinewed meatin March last year and the appearance of horse meat in products.

When her committee questioned the Food Standards Agency abouthow long beef products were likely to have been contaminated with horse meat, they were told the contamination was likely to go back to March 2012, when new supplies were sourced.

The committee’s investigations are ongoing and on March 4 and 5 will question local authorities including those from North Yorkshire on food testing.

The MP for Malton, Filey and Thirsk recently called for a ban on EU imports of meat until they were found to be free from contamination, but the Government said such a ban was illegal unless the meat posed a safety risk.

MrManningsaidallthe companies they had supplied with meat wanted to audit the factory.

“All the major supermarkets Tesco, Morrisons, Asda came and saw the produce and approved it,” he said, and the Food Standards Agency licensed it.

He said: “When they talked about banning imports of EU meat until they were found free from contamination, they were told it was illegalto ban anything in Europe without a health risk.

“The Secretary of State for Environment said there was no health risk associated with desinewed meat. How could they do this to us?”